NMC to host documentary on Palestinian olive farmers, filmmaker Q&A

Northwestern Michigan College will bring a documentary on Palestinian olive farmers and fair-trade markets to the Dennos Museum Center’s Milliken Auditorium, pairing the screening with a filmmaker Q&A in one of Traverse City’s most visible public forums for difficult international issues.

The event, titled Land of Canaan, is scheduled for Thursday, May 14, 2026, from 6:00 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. at 1410 College Drive. The Milliken Auditorium seats 367 people, giving NMC a mid-size venue for a topic that reaches far beyond campus life and into questions of agriculture, trade and conflict in the West Bank.

The program is being presented by Northwestern Michigan College’s International Affairs Forum and On The Ground Global. NMC says the forum’s mission is to advance understanding of critical global issues through education and public dialogue, and that it is a community-supported program affiliated with the World Affairs Councils of America. The forum is in its 32nd season of events, and its 2025-26 season runs from September through June.

That broader calendar matters in Traverse City, where the college has long served as a civic gathering place as much as an academic one. NMC has previously hosted Israel-Palestine programming, including a December 2023 event titled Israel-Palestine: Conflict in Context, showing that the college has already made room for sustained public discussion on a subject that can be politically and emotionally charged even in a small county.

The film centers on Nasser Abufarha, described in source material as a Palestinian-American anthropologist and founder of Canaan Palestine, Canaan Fair Trade and the Palestine Fair Trade Association. His work is said to connect more than 2,000 small-scale farming families in the West Bank to global markets through fair-trade cooperatives. Canaan Palestine says it is headquartered in Jenin and sources olive oil and other ingredients from family farms across the West Bank.

Background information says the Palestine Fair Trade Association was founded in 2004 and now spans 54 villages and about 2,000 family farms. On The Ground Global says it supports sustainable community development in farming regions across the world, and its Palestine-focused work gives the program a clear development and storytelling angle, not just a geopolitical one.

For Grand Traverse County, the screening is another test of how a public college handles a polarizing global conflict in a local setting. By pairing the film with a live discussion, NMC is signaling that the evening is meant to invite explanation, not just reaction, and to use the Dennos as a place where residents can confront hard questions together.